Surprise: Romney's Tax Plan Takes From the Poor, Gives to the Rich

Get ready to have your mind blown. A new non-partisan study has determined that Mitt Romney's tax plan "strongly favors the wealthiest Americans."

The analysis comes from the Tax Policy Center, who note that the bottom 20 percent of earners would see their taxes increase by 1.3 percent ($149) on average. Well, that doesn't sound too bad. But how are the super-rich fairing?

The top 20 percent, meanwhile, would see an average tax cut of $16,134 — a 5.4 percent reduction in their tax rate. The top one percent of earners would see their average tax rate fall by nearly $150,000 per year, and the top 0.1 percent would see a reduction of more than $725,000.

So, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. But it's all for the greater good, right? The Tax Policy Center also looked at how Romney's new tax plan would affect the deficit over the course of the next decade. The answer, it turns out, is "not so well."

According to the Tax Policy Center, Romney's plan would add $900 billion to the deficit in 2015, when the changes would go into full effect. The group has also found that the 20 percent tax cut, combined with Romney's proposal to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, would add $3 trillion to the deficit over ten years — even if the Bush-era tax cuts and more recent tax cuts are extended.

To be fair, Romney also said he would broaden the tax base, thereby spreading the whole getting fucked over thing to a larger group. The Tax Policy Center was not able to factor Romney's theoretical elimination of deductions and loopholes, because he has yet to provide a concrete explanation of his plans.

And in case you're wondering how Obama's tax plan stacks up, the Tax Policy Center reveals that it "would increase taxes on the top 20 percent of earners by two percent while leaving taxes on other Americans essentially unchanged." Won't somebody think of the one percent?